The specified path, file name, or both exceed the system-defined maximum length. For example, on Windows-based platforms, paths must be less than 248 characters, and file names must be less than 260 characters.

The absolute path includes all information required to locate a file or directory on a system.

The file or directory specified by path is not required to exist. For example, if c:\temp\newdir is the current directory, calling GetFullPath on a file name such as test.txt returns c:\temp\newdir\test.txt. The file need not exist.

However, if path does exist, the caller must have permission to obtain path information for path. Note that unlike most members of the Path class, this method accesses the file system.

This method uses current directory and current volume information to fully qualify path. If you specify a file name only in path, GetFullPath returns the fully qualified path of the current directory.

If you pass in a short file name, it is expanded to a long file name.

If a path contains no significant characters it is invalid unless it contains one or more "." characters followed by any number of spaces, then it will be parsed as either "." or "..".

Platform Notes

Silverlight for Windows Phone

This member has a SecurityCriticalAttribute attribute on Silverlight for Windows Phone, because the attribute was present in Silverlight 3. This attribute restricts this member to internal use. Application code that uses this member throws a MethodAccessException.